Cold Spots in Summer
by Colt
Summary: It's only for two months, Nico tells himself. Only two months living by himself in a crappy hotel room before he can move into a real apartment and end his perpetual homelessness. And its not so bad, the hotel room comes with wifi, a microwave, and a resident blonde ghost who won't leave him alone. (Jasico, with one-sided Pernico)
1. Chapter 1

Light roused him. Nico shifted for a moment, then jerked awake with a start. He blinked gritty eyes as the dimmed lights got brighter. A theater attendant stood awkwardly a few steps into his row, as if trying to decide whether to say something.

Nico stared at the screen as the pre-pre-credits for the next movie started and couldn't even remember what the second film of the double feature had been listed as. The attendant hesitantly cleared her throat.

So Nico stretched his cramped legs, kicking the overstuffed knapsack by his feet. He gathered it up and his jacket that had slipped from his shoulders during his sleep. He mumbled something about a boring show as he passed the poor girl.

He stumbled out into the early afternoon, passing eager movie goers lining up for the feature films. Nico checked his phone, realizing he got about four hours of sleep in between the back to back movies.

He also had two voice mails.

"Nico! Nico! Pick up the phone. Its your sister so pick up. Pick up. Pick up. Pick up. Wait this isn't an out loud answering machine." Nico snorted as he walked and listened. "Okay so. My contract expires in two months. I cannot wait to get out of here - whoever thought all female-dorms was a good idea was obviously male. Frank and I found this awesome little two bed two bath place that opens around that time so if you wanna go see it later this week we can. Call me. Me is your sister. Whom you never call. Okay bye."

Nico shook his head and played the next message as he turned for the bus station. "Hello, this message is for Mr. Di Angelo from Stay Time Suites. We processed your payment, and your room is ready for you today. Thank you for choosing Stay Time Suites as your long-ter-"

A boy ran through Nico, and Nico became paralyzed with heart-pounding fear that wasn't his. Someone slammed hard into his shoulder, snapping about taking up the sidewalk, but he couldn't move.

He could only watch as the boy, glowing bright blue in the afternoon sun, was pursued by other, vaguer features that flickered in and out. The boy ran from them, turning into the street as his glow grew brighter -

Then he was doubled over, a car flickered blue in and out of existence, and the glowing boy was suddenly ten feet down the road.

"Dude you dropped your phone," someone called to Nico. The glow died out in a crumpled pile on the pavement. There was nothing he could do.

"Thanks," Nico wheezed, fumbling for a moment to grasp it with shaking fingers. He turned away from where there was nothing now, where nothing was a few seconds ago.

Only Nico saw it. Only Nico ever saw it.

He preferred the happy ones.

He regained himself except for shaking fingers as he double-checked the address on his phone against the bus station route on the wall. He found the right bus port, and had calmed his hands by the time the bus arrived. The bad emotions always lingered far longer than the good ones.

He opened the personal map app on his phone and marked the location in red. Another place to avoid. The map was littered with notes, moments frozen in time.

When he got on the bus he sunk low in his seat and put in headphones. He shut his eyes so he wouldn't see the flickers of blue as the bus drove right through them.

Nico figured he would never be able to drive. He remembered Bianca gripping his wrist tightly as the social worker drove through people only they could see. "Ignore them," she had plead desperately. "Please ignore them Nico. They can't do anything to us." And he couldn't do anything to them. The ghosts never acknowledged the living.

Nico burrowed deeper into the collar of his jacket, and filled his mind by mentally repeating the music lyrics.

He tried to straighten his lanky black hair a bit before picking up his room key. The advertisements attempted to make the long-stay hotel seem legit, but the clerk didn't even ask for an ID. She pointed at a vague map and mentioned they had wi-fi and a pool, which Nico had to walk around to find his room. He ignored the glowing couple in the water, so entangled in their embrace that Nico couldn't tell exactly where one began and the other ended. They were outside. He could deal with that, and never go swimming.

He wasn't expecting much, and the double bed room met it. The only marked difference between this extended stay suite and a cheap hotel room was the presence of a fridge and microwave.

He unpacked into the drawers of a battered standing wardrobe and hid his laptop and an old GameBoy under the mattress of the spare bed. He didn't trust the once a week cleaning staff.

One old blanket, a single picture frame, a pack of cards, and a few small figures later, he threw his empty knapsack in the bottom of the wardrobe and flopped backwards onto the bed. He took in the entire room, in all its yellow light glory. It was crap, but it was his for two months until he moved in with Hazel and her boyfriend.

Someone stepped through the closed bathroom door.

Nico groaned. "No. No!" He sat up and angrily pointed a finger at the figure glowing in front of the mirror, a young man with short cropped blonde hair looking at himself. "Is it so bad to ask for just one piece of my life to be free of you?"

Nico could see through him to the mirror so he was looking at the ghost looking at himself. "Why would this place be your strong memory? Who would be a ghost in thisshithole?!"

The figure blinked, and suddenly he wasn't look at his reflection but the reflection of Nico through it, bright blue eyes widening. "Can you-"

Nico froze.

The ghost turned and looked directly at Nico. "Can you see me?"


	2. Chapter 2

Nico found himself somewhere between near death and a bed-wetting experience. The ghost blinked out and reappeared, brighter and more opaque, leaning over him on the bed forcing Nico back on his elbows. He was so close Nico could make out some kind of tattoo on his arm under the glowing haze.

"You, right there. You can see me?"

Nico meant to say something but a hysterical laugh bubbled out instead. He collapsed back on the bed. "I've lost it. I've finally lost it."

The ghost somehow had the gall to look off-put. "Hey! I am right here, you know!"

"I know! But none of you have ever talked back before! If ghosts start talking to me I have officially gone crazy!"

The figure of a boy leaned back, slumping his see-through shoulders. "So it's true." He gave a strange sigh laced with resignation. "I... I am a ghost."

Nico blinked, and looked up. "Wait, you didn't know...?"

"Am I supposed to?" The blonde ghost's voice was bitter as he looked at himself, his glow fainter.

Nico felt the hysteria bubbling up again and tried to squash it. He rolled off the bed away from the ghost and moved to the door, throwing it open and pointing out at the dimly lit figures wrapped around each other. "Them - see them? They've been like that. They'll be like that. They just are."

The specter of a boy squinted, then frowned. "I see the pool."

"But not the two glowing people playing tonsil hockey in the shallow end?"

The ghost shook his head.

Nico wanted to slam his forehead on the railing. He settled for resting against it.

"I'm Jason," was offered behind him.

"I'm not talking to you," Nico hissed.

"Why not?" The self-proclaimed Jason seemed to find this slightly funny.

"Because you aren't supposed to talk! You aren't supposed to even acknowledge me!"

"How do you know what ghosts are and aren't supposed to do?" Jason floated around and crouched so his face was below Nico's, and his body half hanging through the railing. "Are you some kind of expert?"

Nico scowled and abruptly went back inside, shutting the door quickly. For all the good it did. Jason walked right through it after him.

"Hey come on, please-" Jason reached like he could grab Nico's arm.

Nico recoiled as if burned. "Don't touch me! Don't ever, ever touch me!"

Jason blinked out and back in with a surprised face, hands slowly raising. Nico could see straight through his palms. "If I promise not to touch, will you give me your name?"

Nico didn't answer. He flung himself on the bed, and covered his face with a pillow, like that would somehow block out everything. Or maybe he was attempting to smother himself. He wasn't sure yet.

"Look, try and see it my way," Jason started. "I've been like this for who knows how long with no one to talk to. Please?" The pillow smelled musty. "Come on, I'm lonely."

Nico slowly flipped up the pillow and looked at Jason, taking in the messy hair and a lip scar and ragged hems of his jeans. "...Nico."

"Nico," Jason repeated, with a smile.

"Don't touch me," Nico warned. Jason shrugged.

"I wasn't going to anyways."

Nico wondered about going down to the front office and requesting a different room, but vacancy had seemed slim. And what would he say, my room is haunted?

"How can you see me anyway?" Jason asked. Nico glared at him. "I said I wouldn't touch you, I didn't say I wouldn't talk to you."

"I'm going to work," Nico declared as if aloud to himself, getting up and fetching his jacket.

"Ugh, fine, ignore me." Jason flickered out, but didn't reappear again.

Nico still left, taking his Gameboy and mp3 player with him.

He was super early, but didn't care. He got off the bus a station too soon to get McDonald's, and walked the rest of the way to the dog daycare and grooming.

The door jingled as he opened it. "Welcome to Whiskers and Tai-" The front desk girl looked up and smiled when she saw him. "-Hey Nico."

"Hey Silena." She unlocked the front desk, and Nico lifted the counter hinge himself and relocked it on the other side. He could hear the barking already.

"Oh, you have two cats 'til the end of the week," Silena tilted her head to the board listing the overnight stays.

"Okay." He inhaled more of his milkshake before heading in the back, where the employee area was separated from the dog runs by a wall. Dogs were already causing a ruckus.

Nico finished his first burger and some fries, putting the second in the fridge for later.

"Clocking in early?" The dog groomer and co-owner Clarisse had emerged from the salon, dog hair still covering her clothes and boots. Dog hair clung to everything here - caught in clumps along the fences of the dog runs, worked into the cracks in the concrete floor, rolling along like little tumbleweeds. It wasn't like it was unclean - just no matter how much anyone swept, there was always more.

"If that's okay."

She nodded, removing her smock and hollering, "Silena. Wanna duck out early?"

"Dinner?" Silena called back.

Nico rolled his eyes and clocked in. They didn't technically close for another half an hour, but he started his cleaning duties. He heard them call a goodbye as he finished sweeping the salon, and moved to the front desk area. He had finished restocking their tiny store of dog collars and leashes and some of Silena's homemade dog treats and bows when he almost ran into Jason.

"This is where you work?" Jason asked innocently, sitting on the counter and throwing blue light across the register.

"What the hell!"

Jason inspected the hanging dog tees like he didn't hear. " 'Some days are Ruff'...cute."

Nico scowled as he twisted the door lock, not caring he was a few minutes early, and flipped the Open sign to Closed. "How are you here?" he hissed, quickly shutting the front blinds. Now the room was dimly lit blue.

"I followed you," Jason replied easily.

"You can move around?!"

Jason looked back at him with a grin. "So are you talking to me now?"

Nico wanted to glare again but felt like he was being teased. He went around through the grooming salon to the back, avoiding the counter where Jason sat. He started his rounds on the animals, cleaning up a few messes in the group dog run. Seven overnight dogs happily greeted him, three ghost dogs continued to play.

"What are you looking at?" Jason was there, his jeans and t-shirt changed out for a smock and scrub pants like Clarisse had been wearing.

"You can change your clothes?" Nico demanded before remembering he wasn't talking to Jason.

Jason shrugged, and with a flicker he was back in his own clothes. "With some concentration."

Nico noticed the dogs had all shifted to behind him. One big black dog whined. "Hey, hey it's okay Mrs. O'Leary." Nico knelt to scratch her under her chin. "Good girl."

"So you'll talk to dogs over me."

"You're scaring them," Nico realized aloud.

"What?" Jason looked confused.

"You're scaring the dogs." Nico frowned and looked over at the ghost dogs. Two were gone, but Nico knew they'd be back later. It was an inconsistent loop. They'd lop along and jump and silently bark just the same as they did every time.

He didn't mind them. Dogs only seemed to be happy. Most animals seemed to only be happy, or at least not dwell on the bad stuff enough to leave an impression.

"What does that mean?" Jason asked, walking through the gate of the run so he was farther away.

"I don't know." The dogs seemed to relax a bit. Nico watched them for a moment, and figured they couldn't see Jason but definitely felt his presence.

"I thought you were an expert on this stuff."

Nico shook his head. "I avoid it." He scratched Mrs. O'Leary's ear. "Percy says hi, old girl."

He finally stood up and Jason was watching him. "How do you avoid it when you see it?" Jason mused aloud. "And why work here? You'd make a killing as one of those medium psychic people."

Nico snorted as he let himself out of the dog run and relatched it behind him. He went to start filling dog bowls with food their owners had brought for their dinner. "People want to talk to the dead. Thing is, the dead don't talk back." He glanced at Jason, who was inspecting the line of sheds they used for cat houses along the wall. "Well, usually."

"So what do they usually do?" Jason looked through one of the plastic windows. "Hey kitty." He recoiled from the window. "It hissed."

Maybe cats didn't like ghosts either. "You do nothing. Or. Well. You loop."

"Loop?" Jason asked.

"Yeah. Like a short movie clip or a gif from the internet. The same moment, over and over. Not consistently. Some loop more frequently than others." Nico nodded over to the corner that was empty to everyone but him as he opened a can of expensive dog food for a Dalmatian. "There's one dog that just… is there. All the time. The others come and go."

"Like the moment you die?"

Nico remembered the specter from earlier that day, getting hit by the car. "Sometimes."

"What do you mean sometimes?"

Nico slammed the dog food can down on the table. "Look, I don't know! I don't think about it, much less talk about it! Aren't I crazy enough without having to explain why I'm crazy?"

Jason looked at Nico as if thoughtfully. "I'm trying to understand," Jason said slowly. "Mostly because I'm…like this. But I'm also curious. And-" He gave Nico a look he supposed was meant to be meaningful. "Doesn't it help to talk to someone about it?"

Nico snorted, dumping out cups of dry food into the other bowls. "For all I know, you're just a figment of my imagination that has finally gotten way too out of hand."

Jason moved to lean against the cubby cabinet of the dog supplies and went through it. He straightened back up. "If I'm just a figment of your imagination, then you're just talking to yourself, right?"

Nico picked a tuff of dog hair off his jeans and thought about that. "I guess."

"So then it's fine to talk to me, right?"

Nico groaned, and secretly thought Jason was way too talkative to be any part of his own mind.

_**Author's Note:** This information may work it's way into the story later as well, but at the moment I have no reason/plans to include it, so this is just in case people were wondering. What Nico sees is considered to be a legit type of haunting - It's called the Residual Energy Theory, or "Stone Tape Theory" or "Place Memories"._

_Supposedly, since humans are beings made of energy, we constantly emit that energy into the environment around us. If an energy level is high enough, usually from strong emotions, it makes a sort of recording onto the environment that plays back. Like a tape recording. And certain stones are attributed to holding greater amounts of that energy, where the nickname "Stone Tape" comes from. So not necessarily a ghost, but an energy signature that can be perceived later in time. Place Memory is when a person's memory is so strongly associated to a specific place that they attach to it and can cause others to have images of that memory. They're all considered "non-intelligent hauntings" because they do not interact with living people or the current environment, but the environment as it was when their energy signature was left._

_It's used to explain why if you go into a home where someone died, people say that they can feel it or why some places feel "happy" or "sad". Because the environment soaked up that energy and is emitting it back._


End file.
